The French government will authorize the establishment of a "Sixty" water reservoirs on the territory between 2019 and 2022 for irrigation, said the Minister of Agriculture, Didier Guillaume, on Thursday, August 29, 2019. "We're not going to watch the rain fall from the sky for six months and to look for the other six months of the year ", defended Didier Guillaume. "It's about capturing water rain, to hold it in hollows, to be able to restore it afterwards in the soil when there is drought. " The remedies of associations while these projects are regularly attacked in front of administrative tribunals by the defense associations of the environment, the minister recalled having, together with the Ministry of Ecological transition, "got an instruction arbitrated by the Premier Minister "to" again make water reservoirs ". The document signed in June at the Assises de l'eau, but never really mediated so far, sets the goal of achieving 60 reservoirs "by 2022", and "project instructions start in 2019, "said the minister's office Agriculture in the morning.
Eighteen disputed projects
Thirteen projects of "basins" in the department of Deux-Sèvres, two in Charente-Maritime and one in Vienne are notably challenged by environmental activists. They denounce a system pumping mainly groundwater resources and supporting agriculture as "intensive". The deductions will "be made on territorial projects discussed" with environmentalists, said Didier Guillaume, calling for Pragmatism". "If we want to continue to have an agriculture French, and not to import [agricultural products, Ed] whose we do not want to, so French agriculture has to be resilient, "he said.
AFP
